RaeOvSun

30: The New 50

I feel as if I am going through a midlife crisis and it is so strange to put that into words being 32 years old and feeling like I am 16. I remember as a child thinking OMG 30 is SO old and now that I am in my early 30s I feel like I am so young and I have barely begun to live! I still want my mommy when I’m sick and things go wrong. My daddy is still the coolest of the cool kids. My fiance is forever all shiney and new and gosh just look at him. My kids are my gems (as naughty as they can be) but there are still moments where I’m like, hey, where are your parent? My babysitting days are over!

What is this that I am going through?!

I believe that as I have been diligently working for the same company for just shy of ten years and that the company has managed to become my life I am suddenly feeling as though I have lost myself somewhere along the way. I am a full-time career woman and part time in all other aspects of my life. I stick with the career because it supports my family and for all intents and purposes I am great at it. However, it is not my passion. I am a writer. I get the opportunity to write BUT I enjoy writing fiction not auditing and facilitating deviation records.

Someone asked me why after ten years did I decide to release another novel? It’s funny because ten years ago, 2007, was the last time that I was carefree. In 2007 I was a kid, I was with my first love, my grandmother was my biggest supporter, I was working for Barnes & Noble, the world felt like it was at my fingertips. In 2007 I released my novel, Wounded, which was my first dabble into an urban novel. I’d been writing successfully online for years, had a huge following, had my own website but this was something new for me – putting out my book for everyone and not just hiding in the online shadows with an alias and a book that was outside of my comfort zone as a happy shiny romance novelist. A few months after the release of my book which did very well locally everything fell apart. My first love committed suicide. I quit my cushy job working for Barnes & Noble. I was lost.

In 2008, in recovery mode, I began working for my current employer. They’ve been good to me through the years but my grandmother, my biggest supporter, was always there saying you need to write. That is what you do. That is who you are. It took me ten years to stop being afraid (and lazy, I’ll admit it, I just didn’t want to sit down and edit) to try it again. Life, marketing, social media has evolved at lightning speed within ten years. People don’t even promote the way that they used to. I had to and still am learning how to do this thing independently.

So this year, 2017, I decided here we go! Let’s do this! You’ve been building other people’s dreams but it is never too late to go back and make yours a reality! I released my second novel, Wildfire, in May of this year. My grandmother was SO proud and I was just a little beam of sunshine for bringing that smile to her face…and then in June she passed away – aggressive stage 4 abdominal cancer that was diagnosed in one second and had killed her in the next – and once again I am lost…and I do not know how to recover because all I do is work so I kept working through it, and in the next moment my younger cousin lost his life overseas – and I’m present but I keep working and now I’m waiting. I’m waiting on things to slow down, to stop, so that I can breathe. I’m grasping at straws because I have to make ends meet so I can’t take a break but Lord knows that I need one…and it leaves me at a crossroads.

I’ve spent 9.5 years toiling the soil for Corporate America.

I have to do something different.

I have to make a change.

And not every ten years.

And not just a mere redirection.

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Comments

Krystal Morris

This! We get so caught up in the grind of life it seems in the 30’s we start to realize dreams deferred and want to purse them fiercely! But then there is the responsibilities of career and home life (kids, marriage, bills, Etc.) But something calls you to do MORE. Jump and just maybe we will fly! Keep writing